The Headmaster and the Hotel Room

And other tales of completely inappropriate, if not downright criminal behavior by heads of school.

This month, despite the usual stiff competition, the likely winner of the most lurid private school scandal of the year emerged, with the arrest of Branson School headmaster Thomas Woodrow Price II, aka "Woody," in a hotel room full of recreational drugs and an unconscious 21-year-old woman. Herewith, a list a five unfortunately memorable scandals also involving heads of school.

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Madeira School's campus.

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Madeira School (McLean, VA)

In one of the most sensational secondary education stories ever, Jean Harris (above), the school's headmistress, was tried and found guilty of murdering her ex-lover Herman Tarnower in 1980. Tarnower was a popular Westchester Country cardiologist known as the "Scarsdale Diet Doctor" for writing The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet.

On March 10, 1980, after a 14-year relationship, Harris drove to Tarnower's house in Purchase, NY, with a .32 caliber revolver. She discovered the lingerie of Lynne Tryforos, Tarnower's receptionist, in his bedroom. After an argument, during which Tarnower allegedly said to Harris, "Jesus, Jean, you're crazy! Get out of here!" she shot him four times, killing him.

Harris was charged with second-degree murder and pleaded not guilty, claiming the gun went off by accident when Tarnower tried to wrestle it from her. The trial went on 14 weeks and made national news. The jury didn't buy Harris's defense; she was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. During her incarceration Harris worked to improve educational opportunities for female prisoners, teaching a parenting class and developing a prison nursery for babies born to inmates.

Governor Mario Cuomo commuted the remainder of her sentence in 1992 before a quadruple bypass heart surgery she was scheduled to undergo. Harris died on December 23, 2012, at an assisted-living facility in New Haven, CT.

A sign at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH.

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St. Paul's School (Concord, NH)

In 2005, Bishop Craig Anderson, the school's rector (as the head of school is called there), resigned three years before his contract was set to expire following an I.R.S. investigation into SPS's finances. Anderson's $524,000 annual salary made headlines around the country, along with the way he used funds from his discretionary fund (meant for school expenses) to pay for personal expenses like his Maine yacht club membership.

According to his website, Anderson recently retired as rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Parish on Orcas Island in Washington state and is now assisting bishop in the Diocese of Olympia.

Indian Mountain School (Lakeville, CT)

On October 6 William Brewster Brownville, who attended IMS in the 1980s, filed a lawsuit alleging that male students at the school were routinely subjected to sexual abuse by headmaster Peter Carleton, who died in 1996. Former English teacher Christopher Simonds, who was fired in 1985, was also named in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.

"This was literally a nest of pedophiles operating in a community that allowed them unfettered and constant access to a never-ending stream of prepubescent and pubescent boys for their own sexual gratification," said Brownville's lawyer, Anthony Ponvert, according to the Daily Mail.

Brownville was part of a group of boys chosen to live in Carleton's basement on a rotating basis, where they were allegedly shown pornography and encouraged to masturbate with each other. The suit also states that Brownville was gang-raped on multiple occasions by the school's maintenance department employees.

The suit reopens rumors of a history of abuse at the school, which has a $9 million endowment and in the 1990s settled five similar lawsuits, according to the Daily Mail. No criminal charges were ever filed against Carleton and Simonds.

For his part, current head of school Mark Devey says that nobody currently employed by IMS was working at the school during the era of the alleged abuse.

"We have just seen the allegations and are shocked and disheartened by them," he wrote in an email to the Daily Mail. "Because our first priority is to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the students here, it is deeply disturbing to learn that 30 years ago a student at IMS might have been abused. We are looking into these allegations and we take them very seriously."

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Brooks School (North Andover, MA)

In 2013 it was revealed by the school that Lawrence W. Becker, who served as its headmaster from 1986 to 2008, had an "objectionable, manipulative" relationship with a student that was "an abuse of his position" during his tenure there. The school also disclosed that he had hired a male escort during his time traveling for school business.

According to the Boston Globe, publishing executive and perennial presidential candidate Steve Forbes, a Brooks alum who was head of the school's board of trustees at the time of the alleged abuse, knew of the allegations but did not report them to authorities.

The school's disclosure may have been prompted by "disturbing e-mails" sent by the male escort to school officials, according to the New York Post's Page Six:

When the allegations surfaced last year, Becker said in a statement: "The communication to alumni, parents, and friends from the school, which I loved and to which I devoted myself for 22 years causes me and my wife great pain, sadness, and embarrassment."

Thomas Woodrow Price II

Sacramento County District Attorney's Office

Branson School (Ross, CA)

The Price scandal sticks out simply because the scene of his arrest sounds so much like, well, a private school kid caught in the act. Price was found in a Hyatt hotel room at Sacramento County with copious amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription drugs, as well as the unconscious 21-year-old, whose boyfriend reportedly tipped off the police. Price was cooperative, officers said, though he did take a while to answer the door, at which point "he did identify himself and make mention of where he was and what he did," a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department told the New York Times.

Price's salary was reported as "close to $500,000 a year" at Branson, where annual tuition is $40,000 and whose famous alumni include Julia Child and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

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